Wednesday, 20 February 2013

Opportunity

Last week we had the opportunity to be
given a lecture from Doug Ellison, who is the Visualisation Producer
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. I was
extremely excited for this as I have always been somewhat of a space
geek and an avid admirer of NASA and what they're capable of doing,
and the unbelievable lengths they go to to reveal the unknown
benefiting the whole of mankind.

As I’ve mentioned Doug is
the Visualisation Producer at JPL, which during the lecture he
explained means that he works together with programmers and 3D
artists, as well as the NASA engineers and scientists involved in
NASA's missions to create visualisation tools for the general public.
In a nut shell I believe he designs and creates key visual elements,
primarily animations of various NASA missions to help less space
exploration savvy people like us better understand NASA's ideas,
objectives and the actual missions as well as to engage further with
the missions themselves. Because lets be honest, how much interest do
the general public really take in NASA today? I know I try my best
to, albeit it may be slightly harder to keep up here in the UK, but
with the wealth of information available today through the internet
that’s hardly an excuse. A few years ago I did buy myself the
NASA's greatest missions box-set on blu-ray, on its release day no
less, (I did mention I’ve always been a bit of a NASA fan didn't
I?). I also have NASA on facebook, which, however briefly, lets me
keep up to date to some extent on NASA's current missions etc. But,
on July 20th 1969, yes that’s right, when Neil Armstong
and Buzz Aldrin aboard the Apollo 11 were the first men to ever step
on the moon (the third man who stayed on board Apollo during the
first moon walk was Michael Collins, and he was just as vitally
important to the success of the mission, so don’t forget that
name!), it is estimated that over 500 million people watched every
moment of the arrival of Apollo 11's arrival on the Lunar
surface.

So why such little interest today? Well there's
probably many reasons and I'm probably not the best person to venture
a guess as to why, but I can tell you that it isn't just our
generation that have suddenly lost interest, interest has fallen over
the past 30 years or so, and one reason is that NASA missions
eventually become so routine that people began to feel it was too
easy, especially compared to the likes of the Apollo missions which
some might say were near impossible feats of human exploration. But
also the Apollo missions were some of, some might say were actually
the biggest and most incredible things humankind have ever done bar
none. The engineering, the science, the discoveries and especially
the finances were just mind blowing. But since the Apollo missions I
myself, since being born in 1990 have been treated by NASA to some
life defining experiences that I will always hold as part of my
generation. For a start the Space Shuttle missions which I have been
fortunate enough to be alive over half of the Shuttles life time up
until the sad, but amazingly proud day of July 8, 2011, when I was
able to see Shuttle Atlantis on the last ever Shuttle launch spread
over the news. I am also growing up during the era when we see the
International Space Station continue to expand, and one of the
greatest things to be part of is the recent Mars landings, and most
recently the landing of the Mars Rover Curiosity, and I can only
thank NASA and count my blessings that I am fortunate to be alive at
such a time of continuing great missions and discoveries.

And
so I come back to Doug Ellison and his role at NASA, and if I'm not
mistaken, if you were decent enough to follow the news during
Curiosity decent onto the Mars surface, and shame on you if your
didn't, then you'll of seen various animations explaining to the
general public how the Mars Lander, and Rover worked and would
continue to carry out various tasks on the Martian surface. Highly
detailed animations, like those shown on BBC news, developed by the
Visualisation team at JPL, with whom Doug is the Producer, helped to
explain to the general public all of these things and helped us to
feel engaged with NASA's ground breaking mission and subsequent
discoveries. And it can be simply put that Doug's team at JPL, play
the vital role of connecting us, the general public with NASA's
current missions by moving NASA's communication with us into the 21st
century with such animations as well as interactive experiences
online such as JPL's 'Eye's on the Solar System' which I believe Doug
worked on, and if you haven’t tried it yet here's the link, you
must go and have a go, its awesome;

And we also see interactive augmented
reality apps on the iPad, such as Spacecraft 3D, which I've also been
fortunate to have a play with, which allows you to select from a
number of various spacecraft and learn about and interact with the
spacecraft, seeing how they move right on your dining table! Again
cool! But most importantly these experiences provided by Doug and his
team give NASA the opportunity to educate, and to help people like
myself learn about the engineering feats used to expand our knowledge
and understanding of space alongside the great minds at NASA. So I
thank Doug and his team for providing us with these opportunities and
experiences, and I also thank Doug himself for the great lecture he
gave us on his work and his experiences within NASA and his life
leading up to such a wonderful role, it was an absolute pleasure to
be part of it.

I would like to end this blog by
further cementing my appreciation of NASA and the benefits they
provide for all of humanity, as some may not really understand what
NASA has really provided us over the years. When I was seven I was
unbelievably lucky to be taken to Florida by my Grandparents, and
during our second week there, when everyone went back to Disney Land,
my Grandad took me alone to Kennedy Space Centre, as mentioned I have
always, always been so interested in space and NASA. It is an
experience I will never forget. (I was quite disappointed to learn
there was to be a Shuttle Launch on the same day the very next week!
As you can imagine I was more gutted than dissapointed!), but
nonetheless, the visit to Kennedy Space Centre was one of the most
wonderful things I've done in my life so far, to experience the
rocket gardens and actually see inside some of the rockets, to go
through the huge facility with an actual Saturn V rocket inside, the
sheers size of it, and even at such a young age to have an
appreciation of how this unbelievably massive thing could get into
space was purely overwhelming to say the least. And last but not
least, despite not seeing the Shuttle Launch the next week, I was
able to stand on the viewing platform were thousands of people would
stand the very next week to witness the launch, see the launch pad
off in the distance, see the countdown clock right in front of me
and, amazingly, to see the Space Shuttle Discovery a mere few hundred
feet away on the back of a mover on its way to the launch pad!!! I
count myself very lucky for this experience, and as you can probably
guess, it is one I will never forget.

Oh! and for those of you who haven’t
yet guessed, the title of my blog post 'Opportunity', not only
describes my experiences of NASA as mentioned in my blog, but, it is
also the name of one of the twin Mars Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity)
which landed on Mars on January 25, 2004, and unbelievably is still
active to this day 9 years later! What more can be said about NASA's
amazing work!